A business enterprise can have many locations (locations in different areas of the country or in different countries), practices (e.g., different software practices such as Java or SAP (Systems Applications and Products)), and market offerings (services and/or products offered by the business enterprise). The different locations, practices, and market offerings can make up various organizations within the enterprise. Also, the business enterprise can have a large multi-skilled workforce, where the workforce can include employees, contractors, offshore providers, and/or third-party partners.
Periodically, the business enterprise can set target revenues for various organizations of the business enterprise. A challenge faced by the business enterprise is to properly plan for such target revenues. Planning involves determining whether the target revenues can be met with the workforce that each organization has available.
Typically, the planning process is performed manually, with the goal of identifying workforce gaps. Once workforce gaps are identified, planners manually fill these gaps, such as by use of offshore resources or other external workers (third-party partners or contractors). Conventionally, the manual process of filling gaps in the workforce focuses primarily on meeting target revenues, while generally other factors such as costs of delivery and profitability of the business enterprise are ignored. Consequently, although target revenues of the business enterprise may be achieved by filling workforce gaps, the profitability of the business enterprise may actually be adversely affected.